Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Staunton, April 18 – Representatives
of a significant cross-section of non-Russian nations now within the borders of
the Russian Federation have launched an online petition on Change.org to oppose
Moscow’s plans to make the study of non-Russian languages entirely voluntary while
keeping the study of Russian compulsory.

Ayrat Fayzrakhmanov, a Tatar who is
a member of the group behind this drive says that if the draft law making this
change is adopted, “then Tatar, Yakut, Chuvash and other languages of the peoples
of Russia” will be reduced to elective status, something that will threaten
their survival in the future (idelreal.org/a/29174650.html).

Among
those who are behind it was Ivan Shamayev, a Sakha Republic State Assembly
deputy, Ruslan Kurbanov, an orientalist from Daghestan, Aysin Ruslan, a Tatar
journalist, Mark Shishkin, a regional specialist, Ayrat Fayzrakhmanov of the
Platform XXI, representatives of the Chuvash Republic and representatives of the
Association of Finno-Ugric Peoples.

The
non-Russian peoples have good reason to fear what will happen if Putin as
expected gets his way.Yesterday, at the
United Nations forum on indigenous peoples, Igor Barinov, head of the Federal
Agency for Nationality Affairs, said native languages aren’t “a social
necessity” but rather a private matter (nazaccent.ru/content/27051-glava-fadn-rasskazal-v-oon-o.html).

That comment strongly suggests that
if the Kremlin can push the non-Russian languages out of the schools of the
non-Russian republics by making them voluntary, it will then proceed to go
after non-Russian media and even the existence of the non-Russian republics themselves
or even the official status of nationality as such.